Eyes
by misaoshiru
Summary: (Bakumatsu vignette) Why is it that we face the toughest decisions on the nights that start out completely normal? (Kenshin's POV; oneshot)


Disclaimer: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin. I never have, and considering that all the money I currently have is about two pennies and some emergency phone change, I most likely never will. Used without permission; no money is being made.

Some lines quoted from maigo-chan's manga translations. They may have been paraphrased, as I was quoting from memory. Sorry. Thank you for betaing this for me, Nekotsuki! 3

**Eyes  
**_By Misaoshiru_

It all started out as a normal night. They all did, the hellish nights when something catastrophic happened. I had only been scratched once since I became a hitokiri for Katsura, but it was nights like these that etched countless scars, not on my body but on my heart.

I received a black envelope in the afternoon; in those days, I got a black envelope practically every day. The days when I didn't grew to be a somewhat strange experience for me, though that's not to say that I didn't enjoy those rare occasions. The mission—if assassination can be referred to with such a casual term—was a normal one. Just "kill a man and his two bodyguards," nothing overly complicated. As soon as the sky was adequately dark, I headed out. It wasn't hard to find the street the man would be taking, even under the cover of darkness. All that was left was to wait, and even that was easy enough. There were too many people on the streets that night, though. That was the only difficulty.

When I saw the man and his bodyguards approaching, I knew it was time. I disappeared into a shadowy alley, checking first to make sure it was empty, and I picked up a fairly large pebble. My aim would have to be perfect; I doubted I'd get a second chance, but if I timed it right I wouldn't need one. I threw it, and it bounced off of the man's shoulder. Good. Being a sensible shogunate official, he sent one of the two bodyguards to investigate rather than going himself, but I had accounted for that ahead of time.

The bodyguard was dead upon entering the alley. The man and his remaining guard waited in vain on the side of the street for their companion's return. After about five minutes, they entered the alley themselves, presumably worried for the other man's well being. Everything was going according to plan. I showed myself and whispered that I had come to deliver Heaven's Justice, and then I killed both of them before they could say anything. And then…then it hit me. There was someone else in the alley.

He was a young man who appeared to be about twenty years of age—five years older than me. And he was unarmed. He must have entered the alley right after the official and his bodyguard. He was cowering in fear against a fence, across the alley from where I stood. He was a witness; he had seen me work. But he was a civilian.

I had to kill him, and yet I couldn't. He was a witness, but at the same time, he was also an innocent. He had to die, but in my heart, I wanted him to live. I couldn't figure out what to do; my head began to ache from wracking my mind so hard for a solution. The only thing that I found I could do was to dampen down my thoughts and allow my reflexes to…to do the unthinkable. Nothing else could be done. Yes, I killed him, an innocent, just because he was a witness. I _had_ to.

With Tomoe, it was different, although I am unsure why. Tomoe's situation was really no different from his; she was certainly no better a person than this young man.

And yet…

Dammit! When I've been in Tomoe's presence, she has surprised me with the reactions she has induced in me. It has been going on since the day I met her, the time when I logically should've killed her but found that for some reason I couldn't. I can only speculate as to what that reason was. And the things she's said…they make me wonder if I'm going crazy, although I might well have been crazy for a long time. So what, then, do my reactions mean?

"So then, will you finish me off, like you did that samurai in black?" she had asked, with a fire that had taken me by surprise. In fact, the entire question took me by surprise! Was she accusing me of something? And if there was, was it even undeserved? I had to wonder.

'It doesn't matter,' I reminded myself, though in reality it was more like I was trying to convince myself. "Think what you will," I responded through gritted teeth, "but I don't kill indiscriminately, only armed members of the Bakufu who oppose us. Naturally, civilians might oppose us as well, but I'd never strike an unarmed man."

And yet I _had_, and I knew it. And that man's lifeless eyes stared back at me in my mind, and not only with more reason behind it than those of my other victims. No, they stared more piercingly than any eyes, whether living or dead, that I had ever seen in my life. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

End "Eyes" 

Author's Notes: Just another little Kenshin POV vignette, though it's almost twice as long as the others. Got the idea for it while running in P.E., actually. I suck at running, and it probably doesn't help that I constantly distract myself with Rurouni Kenshin… XD But it's hard to break habits, and Rurouni Kenshin is a lot more interesting. Yeah.


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